


Like A Fire (Don't Need Water)

by jane_potter



Series: The Riotverse [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Sexual Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-04
Updated: 2010-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:23:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jane_potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S'chn T'gai Spock is an entirely logical being. In this, he is like all other Vulcans. S'chn T'gai Spock has a rather unique concept of what constitutes logic, however. He considers emotion to be a valid point of consideration in it. In this, he is vastly unlike all other Vulcans. By the time he is twenty-one, they will consider him a terrorist for it. But that is later. This is now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Fire (Don't Need Water)

**Author's Note:**

> In which I fail at remixing. There's a lot more backstory and a lot less dark sexy remix in this than there should be, but Spock just wasn't satisfied without his past. Seeing as it's from Spock's POV and Standard isn't his first language, I have used the (made up) native Vulcanir word for 'Vulcan', _w'l'qn_ as both an adjective and a proper noun for the planet and the people; the plural for people, ie. 'Vulcans', being _w'l'qni_; and the name of the language 'Vulcanir' being _w'l'qnir_.

S'chn T'gai Spock is an entirely logical being. In this, he is like all other Vulcans.

S'chn T'gai Spock has a rather unique concept of what constitutes logic, however. He considers emotion to be a valid point of consideration in it. In this, he is vastly unlike all other Vulcans. By the time he is twenty-one, they will consider him a terrorist for it.

But that is later. This is now.

*

The high-frequency chirp coming from Spock's earpiece made him wake immediately, rolling over in bed to turn his wired ear off the pillow so that he could acknowledge the signal with a tap of a button. "Present," he murmured softly, muffling his mouth near the pillow because his father was an extraordinarily light sleeper. The sensitive mic was tuned to pick up only sound waves along the frequency of his voice. It was a useful tool for preventing his location from being divulged by background noise.

"_It's Am'e. I'm shifty right now, gotta keep this clipped, but I thought you'd want to be loop-in-- the _Number One_ just got berthy._"

Spock went from mildly interested to completely awake in a heartbeat. He sat up immediately, gently shifting aside the sheets with as little noise as possible. "Where?"

"_Spacedock 19_."

"Is the crew beaming down?"

"_Pos. Captain's filed a transporter req for eight people_."

"How long?"

"_Be timey before they finish docking procedures and clear customs. An hour, hour-ten on the abs max_."

Spock strode across his room, bare feet soundless on the clean, unobstructed floor. In the pitch blackness, without even a faint wash of starlight coming in through his window, he moved to his shelving unit and began removing the necessary materials with unerring precision. He had, after all, practiced such procedures to the point of perfection.

"Inform me of their beam-down location when they file it."

"_Wilco. Out_."

"Out."

His hand resting on the cool leather folded at the bottom of a deep drawer, Spock paused for a moment to take stock of himself. His heart was beating 1.3 times faster than usual, and his respiration was accelerated by 12.7%.

_Excitement_. A forbidden cocktail of hormones and receptor complexes, chemical reactions resulting in the preparation of the body for strenuous activity, and all with the added benefit of physiological effects similar to a mild high.

He could return to bed, complete his nocturnal cycle with the recommended number of hours of sleep, and let nothing come of Am'e's alert. There was nobody depending on Spock to act, or even expecting him to. Nobody would be the wiser if he did nothing. In fact, it would be simpler and easier that way.

That thought was exactly what spurred Spock on to remove the rest of his illicit clothing from the drawer, along with the cosmetics kit hidden behind an 36 volume set of encyclopedias on engineering. He dressed like it was a mission, quickly and in total silence, as relieved to be slipping into the supple leather as if it was his second skin. To his sensitive nose, the jacket breathed a sigh of recycled shipboard air and phaser-fire ozone.

Spock was fully aware the psychological effects that the clothing had on him: it carried no connections to all the years of oppressive _w'l'qn_ discipline, and he associated it with confidence, capability and most of all freedom. There was no point in suppressing those associations. They had been well earned, and, moreover, he did not want to. He had bled and sometimes fought for each and every scrape marring the leather. He had killed for the jacket's insignia.

"_Spock. Beam-down location's Sdvaar, main transporter facility. Out_."

"Copy. Out."

Cautiously, Spock turned the light pod on his desk to 15% power. By the dull orange glow he applied shimmering green-bronze powder to his cheeks and crisp black liner to his eyes, sweeping pale nacreous dust over all of his exposed skin until it luminesced pale. In the tiny pocket mirror, he looked on as the familiar ritual of foreign people transformed him into a sleek feline creature with few cares and fewer inhibitions. It was somewhat of a strange face, one had had fallen out of habit of looking at.

At  last, Spock tucked a tube of lipstick in his pocket and crept out the window. The isolation of his father's estate served him well; because there was such a low probability of thievery, the alarms on the hangar were perfunctory at best, and simple to bypass. Slipping away into the desert with his hoverbike was the work of minutes. Both of his parents thought the second-hand machine was merely an academic pursuit, a project still incomplete and by no means functional. Spock had not disabused them of the notion.

Half a kilometre away from the estate, he started the engine and swung astride. His posture changed automatically, thighs and calves pressing in flush to the saddle and his boots fitting snug into the stirrups, and though the saddle's polymer was worn hard from years of ownership prior to Spock, it felt like the most comfortable thing he knew. Spock felt another tremor of awakened memory run through him at the hum of bridled power beneath him, the bike's lifters rebounding slightly beneath his weight as if the machine were replying to him.

The nuclear battery cleverly concealed inside the restored antique engine was whisper quiet as he whipped over the blurring desert sands in excess of three hundred kilometres an hour. The artificial wind cut at his jacket, tearing his hair into wild abandon. By the time he reached Sdvaar, the shuttle hub's outskirts a lurid neon beacon on the otherwise barren horizon, Spock's heart was pounding and his pupils were dilated with unadulterated exhilaration, and he remembered full well who he was again.

*

Until he is six, Spock thinks that _w'l'qn_ law is entirely correct in every incarnation-- it must be, for it is pure logic.

Then his father takes him to the embassy in Trkk't to watch as a delegation of Starfleet officers, fully armed, surrounds a group of escaped Orion slaves and crushes the wailing slaves to the floor of the hall, employing phasers and fists until the unconscious Orions litter the floor like famine corpses, their limp outflung limbs bruised purple and bleeding green. The _w'l'qn_ guards in the hall help the Starfleet officers to subdue their captives.

Nineteen Orions who literally crawled off their hypothermic shuttle onto Free Space soil in order to claim sanctuary are beaten down, put in manacles and dragged back into slavery as two hundred observers and the highest governing council of _w'l'qn_ look on and do nothing.

This is what the law says is correct.

This is also the day that Sarek and Amanda discover their son is telepathically sensitive, as he ends up screaming in agony until his throat goes hoarse and then spends the next eight days trembling and nearly catatonic in bed, unable to sleep, eat or speak.

Sarek never apologises for this exposure, even if he never repeats it again. Spock never thanks him for it.

*

Flamboyantly painted and dishevelled by the ride, Spock fit right in on Sdvaar's brightly lit streets. The shuttle hub was little more than an extended red light district, and had nothing more than it needed to cater to the temporary pleasures of transient outworlders who never stayed more than a night or two. Hotels, bars, clubs, restaurants, shops and casinos lined the streets, stacked three high and covered in flashing billboards and screens. Everything was illuminated as bright as day in twenty colours of fluorescent light, blinking and buzzing urgently for attention; in fact, the lights were so important to Sdvaar that it was always night underneath the huge polarised dome that moderated the hub's climate for the comfort of visitors, few of whom had any desire to visit _w'l'qn_ for its deserts.

_W'l'qn_ natives, on the other hand, rarely ever went to Sdvaar. Certainly none of them ever got jobs there; everything from policework to municipal works was left entirely to other species. In fact, most actively avoided even talking about the shuttle hub, and would be reluctant to admit it if they had been there despite the illogic inherent in untruth. The very name, _sdvaar_, meant 'gross excess' and carried connotations of the rankest obscenity. As far as anybody was concerned, Sdvaar existed purely and solely for economical reasons, namely that the location drew thousands of illogical, uncontrollable outworlders to spend their money and contained them all in one place far from civilisation.

Impatient with the people thronging the streets in blatant disregard of traffic by-laws, Spock revved the cycle's engine a bit as he threaded through the heavy foot traffic. Local ordnance prohibited the use of vehicle air lifters within the city limits, slowing Spock's travel considerably. Eying the numerous other drivers impatient to get through, he restrained the urge to assert that his expeditious travel was far more critical than theirs.

An hour and twenty eight minutes had passed since Am'e had alerted him to the _Number One_'s arrival, and Spock knew that he might have already missed his chance. If he didn't catch any the crew members before they departed the facility, he had only a 12.8% chance of tracking one down again. Furthermore, his window of opportunity was severely limited, perhaps only to the next six hours. Any tardiness in returning home would alert his parents to his absence, as would missing a class at college later the next day if he were to return to Sdvaar then. On the ride over, he had feverishly calculated a 4.9% likelihood of the _Number One_ returning to _w'l'qn_ within the next two years.

Restricted as he was by the need to conceal his subversive involvements from his parents, his peers, his professors, all Spock had to work with was what fell in his lap, as the human phrase went. There were still too many people in positions of power over Spock for him to admit to his actions. The consequences would have been severe: most likely incarceration, whether it was in his home or a government prison. Moreover, his uncovering would have brought down the entire network of contacts that Spock had worked so hard to build.

Deception was entirely logical. Nobody could know that he intended to leave _w'l'qn_ until he was already gone-- gone, and not coming back any time soon.

Finally, Spock pulled up outside Sdvaar's main transporter facility and locked his cycle up quickly. His stride was long with urgency. Halfway to the entrance, however, a face in the crowd streaming past Spock brought him to a jarring halt.

A human male, short for his age, and perhaps ten pounds leaner than his last updated dossier had reported. Shaggy hair the colour of a selhat's undercoat, uncut from months at space and unkempt from carelessness. Eyes as blue as an Andorian albino's. Rough, textured human skin, sharp with spacer's stubble and less innocent scar tissue, old phaser burns marking his forehead and throat, a particularly white line bisecting his upper lip. These were the facts of Jim Kirk, as told by gossiping outworlders and Union wanted posters.

This was not the totality of Jim Kirk. Struck as much by his own massive good fortune as by Kirk's mere presence, Spock was staring, transfixed, as he turned on his heel and pursued the man. His eyes devoured every centimetre of Kirk, singling out the concealed weapons that distended his jacket as much as the faint smears of sweat and machine oil darkening Kirk's hairline.

The dossier had not described his clothing, which Spock cataloged minutely: jeans, soft and faded white with wear, battered boots with heavy soles of rubberised acrylic, a jacket whose scarred surface betrayed its owner's lack of respect to leather goods, which on _w'l'qn_ were prized above all others because of the relative rarity of naturally deceased animals from which to harvest suitable hides.

The dossier had not described his stride: long, purposeful, even angry. Captain Richard Robau, under whom Spock had served three years ago, had had a similar stalk, displayed as he had been prone to pacing the _Luther King_'s bridge in moments of intense frustration. The dossier had not accurately described Kirk's roving, suspicious eyes, possessed of an animal light that made the nervous crowds part before him. The dossier had not described his physical presence at all, a fact perhaps unsurprising because the report had originated from a government of psi-null beings.

Kirk's mind was a powerful one. From a cautious ten metres back, Spock could still feel the grating of the human's mental energy. After a long consideration, Spock opened his mental channels, letting down the strict shields that usually cut off his abnormally acute telepathic senses from the world at large. Immediately he was bombarded with energies from all sides, the intrusions spiking whenever somebody brushed by too close to him. But over it all, like a jagged scream, was Kirk, broadcasting harsh and hard, broadcasting nothing but pure psi waves.

Spock didn't dare to do anything more than receive passively. Kirk's psionic abilities seemed to be within the human range, if only barely, but Spock wouldn't have discounted telepathic ancestry. He knew better than anyone how mixed genetics could affect telepathic abilities: far from limiting him, as had once been hypothesised, Spock's human genes had somehow granted him abilities beyond anything pure _w'l'qn_ stock could produce. Though he required physical contact in order to connect minds, his sensitivity to psi waves was unprecedented, on par with that of a true telepath. Spock knew it was intimidating to his peers and did his best to conceal it. Therefore, despite Kirk's inability-- or refusal-- to shield, he might have any number of dangerous talents as yet undisplayed.

Intrigued even further by the infamous young human, Spock increased his pace slightly and followed him on through Sdvaar's gaudy brightness.

*

T'Pol is the only one of Sarek's family who ever visits their estate. The frequency of her social calls confuses Spock, for he knows that his father doesn't get along with T'Pol particularly well at all. They disagree loudly on almost every occasion that they speak. In private, Sarek speaks disapprovingly of her outspoken habits.

But she visits often.

She is, in fact, very nearly a secondary caretaker for Spock. Amanda never leaves the estate, but there are occasions on which Sarek and Amanda leave Spock to T'Pol's care and disappear into their wing of the house for a time. Sometimes these are days that Amanda marks on her calendar in red, Terran holidays such as Valentine's Day and Christmas Eve, and sometimes not. Spock often cannot see a logic in the timing but does not see quite fit to ask his father.

On one such occasion when Spock is nine, his parents state their intent to be absent for several days (it is one of those randomly timed excursions). T'Pol comes prepared to stay for the whole period.

She asks if Spock has completed his homework, to which he responds negatively. When he has finished it and goes in search of T'Pol, he finds her in the recreational room. To his shock, she has removed her outer robes and stockings and taken down her hair from its arrangement, and looks quite content sorting through a small assortment of music datasolids that she brought with her.

"We are going to play Monopoly," she announces to Spock, gesturing him in to sit down opposite the bewildering arrangement of holocards and game pieces she has set up on the floor. There is no time for him to get over this shock before T'Pol selects a datasolid apparently to her satisfaction and plugs it into the speaker system. The outpouring of sound, contrary to the subtle lute or drum patterns Spock expected, is resonant and bright and utterly alien. As a voice in Standard begins to sing something about his mother Mary, T'Pol sits down cross legged in front of the game board and waits expectantly until Spock gingerly seats himself opposite.

The next morning, T'Pol follows the _w'l'qn_ custom that a guest prepares breakfast for her host. The only thing customary about it is the sliced berries, which are served on top of several soft checker-patterned pieces of sweet bread she calls 'waffles' and serves with fruit syrup and melted white chocolate.

That afternoon, they play another game. It is called poker. T'Pol seems to consider teaching Spock to cheat more important than teaching him to play by the rules.

That evening, John Lennon (whom Spock has now been introduced to at considerable length) sings about revolution through the speakers turned up a little too loud while T'Pol speaks of the _w'l'qn_ parliament with blatant disgust, of venerated rebels in Terran history who fought against their governments because they believed that the majority's wisdom could be wrong, and of the lives of immense suffering and immense joy lived by beings beyond the blockade. Spock listens to it all with a kind of wondering, overwhelmed awe as his world becomes far larger than he ever dreamed.

Sarek does not seem to like T'Pol, yet it is entirely at his invitation that she continues to visit.

*

Kirk finally chose a club almost thirty minutes' walk from the facility. Spock couldn't help but raise an eyebrow when Kirk showed a weapons-check chip to the bouncer and was allowed through, despite the fact that the outline of a sheathed pistol tucked against his inner calf was very evident through the boot. Clearly the club's security was more lax than Spock had thought.

His mental shields shored up high, Spock entered the club three minutes later. No matter, though: Kirk was somewhere inside and only exit available to the public was the entrance Spock had been in line at. Curious that such a purportedly suspicious man would choose a club with only one point of egress.

Prepared as Spock was, the onslaught of psi waves still took him by surprise. They were hot and textured, roiling, so very unlike the slippery wisps of _w'l'qn_ thought that Spock was used to receiving. Dazed, Spock felt himself sway on his feet a bit. The emotion drug was seeping into his system already, awakening the hedonistic urge to glory in it all like a selhat basking insouciantly in the sun. His skin hummed with vibrations; the abnormally keen psi points all over his body tingled while the main points on his face fairly seared with energies that resonated thick and sweet through his skull.

Shaking his head to clear out the muggy haze, Spock detoured away from the dance floor. When a sweat-shiny Sulamid caught his arm and tried to lead him to the floor with a welcoming grin, the apologetic smile that came to Spock's lips as he slipped away was reassuringly automatic. Climbing the stairs up to the second level catwalk lifted him out of the physical press, if not the mental one, and it gave him a chance to catch his rasping breath.

At least he had not forgotten the cues and faked emotions that had taken him so long to learn. This other person, this creature who felt utterly confident in lipstick and eyeliner, was a more complex construct than most _w'l'qn_ would have given it credit for. It was one thing to enjoy sensation, and quite another to openly revel in it while remaining graceful and demonstrative enough to attract others. Any display at all was a direct contradiction to the years of _w'l'qn_ training that Spock had undergone. As self indulgent as Spock was, there were some things that even he had trouble doing.

Spock took the difficulty as a challenge. If there was only one thing at which he had had much practice, it was rising against adversity.

*

Captain Richard Robau is tall, broad and forbidding, and Spock is fascinated by him from the moment that he first sees the man's expressive holophoto on a Union wanted poster. The charges are desertion of Starfleet, conspiracy to commit terrorism and accessory to the theft of the starship _Kelvin_.

Fourteen years after the _Kelvin_'s infamously disastrous bid for freedom from the Union, Robau still flies with members of the same crew that survived along with him. Because Union criminal charges do not apply inside the Free Space blockade, they operate a legal (for the most part) cargo shipping service between the Free Worlds. It is a surprisingly quiet life for a man who helped to execute the most audacious crime against the Union ever committed.

But, even at fifteen years old, Spock finds holes in the _Luther King_'s shipping records with only a little digging. There is a lag in the _King_'s estimated date of arrival every time they ship out to a fringe world. A late arrival once or twice would be nothing strange, but it is consistent. Every time Robau's ship goes near the edge of Free Space, it delivers its cargo two or even three weeks late. It takes considerably more work to uncover, but Spock finds that the _King_ also experiences inexplicable delays when it passes through a certain area of deserted space between Betazed and Omicron VIII. Curiously, the crew has taken great pains to conceal _these _delays, though not the others, with reports of engine failure, trouble at Betazed customs, shipwide illnesses, extended shore leave and cargo lost at retrieval points.

It takes Spock three weeks to realise the truth, whereupon he feels incredibly stupid.

Robau is smuggling slaves.

The deserter rebel captain of the _Kelvin_, a flesh trader? Impossible, unless Robau's morals as well as those of all his crew have undergone a complete reversal. But ferrying escaped slaves into Free Space, and taking supplies to a secret colony established near infamously sympathetic Betazed? Spock calculates a likelihood of 96.8%.

As a free man running a legal business, Robau is at first very simple to contact. He responds positively to Spock's queries about shipboard life and captaincy, and what few reservations Robau has when he learns that Spock is Vulcan fade quickly at Spock's continued interest. It isn't long-- only nine weeks-- before Spock has managed to manipulate Robau into what he thinks is a position receptive to his real inquiries.

_How did you decide that freeing slaves was a suitable occupation_?

In retrospect, this was not an appropriate way to broach the topic.

Robau stops replying immediately. Spock quickly realises his mistake and finds himself with no other choice but to continue dogging the captain. Robau changes his contact information twice, and Spock tracks him down again both times. It isn't until he finally shows his full hand-- _I am already fully aware of the colony on Georganna X_\-- that Robau responds again.

_What the fuck do you want, then_?

Spock remembers suddenly that he is dealing with a pirate. It also strikes him then that he doesn't quite know. These past four months, he has pursued Robau relentlessly, all the while not quite certain what he is even looking for or why he should be so interested-- rather, not quite able to admit to himself what he intends to do

It takes Spock eleven straight hours of meditation to finally be sure of his answer. It takes him three days longer to be entirely certain that this is the life he is ready to commit himself to. Then a group of Syndicate ships burn down a civilian farming settlement outside of the blockade, some place called Tarsus IV, and take a reported two thousand and eight slaves. He is decided immediately.

_I want you to teach me_.

*

Spock waited for fifty-three minutes before he saw a suitable opportunity to engage Kirk. The man had unwittingly foiled Spock's first attempt to get close, as he had abruptly left the group of DzzzZz just before Spock could cut in on his next dance. Thwarted, Spock slunk back into the crowd and lingered near Kirk's new location for a while under the pretext of allowing an overeager young Cardassian to dance with him. The girl's hands roved incessantly but her psi waves were cool and soothing, if distractingly sexual. At last, right as Spock's patience grew worn to the very limit, Kirk provided him with an opening.

Phylogeny recapitulate ontogeny, let alone be _enabled _by it? Ludicrous. Spock knew that derision bled into his voice when he leaned into Kirk's ear and purred, "Oh, I would beg to differ."

Kirk jerked around in the lap of the man he was seated with, who for the past ten minutes had been unsubtly groping Kirk with what looked like painful frequency. Spock kept his smirk cool when he saw Kirk's doleful eyebrows rise at the sight of him, but was inwardly relieved that his choice of pose had been correct, for the man's wonderfully expressive face displayed his titillation clearly.

Surprisingly, Kirk admitted to his error. Curious-- Spock had never met someone who enjoyed tricking others with obvious falsehoods. Though it lowered his opinion of Kirk's character, it also raised his estimation of the man's intellect.

He ordered a drink, pleased when Kirk fell obediently into the opening and said, "Make it two. His is on me." That particular beverage wouldn't do anything to a human constitution, but Spock wasn't about to inform Kirk of that when the man was posturing so openly for him. Instead, he allowed himself to stare without even pretending that he was looking for more concealed weaponry. Kirk was a handsome man, surprisingly soft when he abandoned his jagged exterior; indeed, his psi waves had mellowed considerably with alcohol and conversation.

Distracted by Kirk's easy wit, Spock was taken aback when the man's psi energy sharpened suddenly: the engineer that Kirk had been sitting with tried to manhandle Kirk back to him, threatening, and abruptly Kirk's mellow waves spiked into brittle razors. Spock was alarmed at the level of murderous intent emanating from Kirk even as he smiled and dismissed the man. His thought of a knife was more than clear.

Frantic to stop the engineer before he found himself bleeding out on the floor, Spock interrupted the idiot's next threat. 'Cupcake' was tall for a human, at least ten centimetres taller than Spock, but his skeleton and muscle tissue were nowhere near as dense and he weighed as much as a _w'l'qn_ half his size. Spock lifted him easily by the collar, let the display speak for itself and said simply, "Shut up."

Kirk flashed his knife but didn't use it, his psi waves modulated to mockery and amusement. For possibly the first time ever, Spock was truly grateful that he was so abnormally sensitive. Without the ability to feel when Kirk's blaring emotions contradicted his facial expressions, he would never have been able to read his swiftly changing mood.

Spock was grateful that Kirk slid smoothly back to flirting once the interruption was gone. He seemed to appreciate Spock's play on 'handle', which, combined with the first swallow of his drink, gave Spock the courage to lewdly suggest, "Smooth going all the way down."

Kirk was amused. "I'll bet it's not the only thing. Is it a Vulcan creation?"

_W'l'qni_, creating a highly intoxicating beverage out of alien substances? Spock didn't try to curb his noise of derision. "No. It's mine." And it was, created out of what few chocolate comestibles had been in the _Luther King_'s tiny galley six months into the tour, at the behest of nearly the entire crew badgering him to 'bond' with them. Contrary to Spock's misgivings, and much to his relief, they had proceeded to take remarkably good care of him when he had utterly overestimated his tolerance and ended up incapacitatingly drunk.

"And thus bringing us ever closer to the thus far elusive subject of your name. Why isn't it called after you? I'm sure you've got a _great _one."

Spock hesitated. Robau had divulged his position in _w'l'qn_ society by his name, and been none too pleased to find that he had been communicating with a member of the House of Surak, son of Intermediary Sarek, grandson of Elder T'Pau. Kirk might well be able to do the same. "Salik."

"I'm Tyler," Kirk lied. "Nice to meet you."

And then the handshake, obscene custom of ignorant humans everywhere. Spock was suffused with a glow of amusement as he laid his hand in Kirk's and groped him thoroughly. Taking advantage of a human's inexperience was not something he did often, or lightly, but the second Spock touched Kirk's skin he got a crystal clear blast of just how much Kirk truly wouldn't mind even if he knew what Spock was doing. Suddenly flushed with his own arousal in response, he lifted his eyes to Kirk's dilithium-blue ones and held them.

Kirk's breath hitched as Spock stroked his palm, their calluses catching and scraping pleasureably. Slowly, dragging out the experience as long as he could, Spock ran his fingertips up Kirk's, teasing the creases of softness on the undersides of his knuckle joints obscenely. The contrast between velvety smoothness and hardened callus made Spock shiver. Human though he was, Kirk seemed to have some idea of just what Spock was doing, for he held still through it all until at last Spock drew back with a flourish against his fingertips, exactly the motion that had once made T'Pring actually shiver on the rare occasions that she had wished to indulge in physical contact with Spock.

Strangely, it wasn't the kiss that affected Kirk but Spock's Vulcanir pronunciation of his name as, "Ty'hllr." Kirk's psi waves were a warm ripple of arousal. Intrigued by the unusual reaction, Spock used his secondary vocal cords in repeating more harshly, "Ty'hllr."

Even in the dim lights, he could see Kirk's slow pulse beating faster at his throat, garish iron-based blood vibrating the delicate pink-tinged skin just over his jugular. Lured by the briny tang of human sweat, Spock finally allowed himself to lean over and breathe in, hydroreceptors in his nostrils tasting the decadent waste of precious water shining slippery on Kirk's skin.

Kirk's jacket smelled of recycled shipboard air and phaser-fire ozone.

*

The _Luther King_ makes berth in spacedock over _w'l'qn_ for its annual exoskeletal maintenance. In retrospect, this should have been another clue to Spock that the _King_ was involved in subversive activity. No ordinary cargo ship needs photon torpedo craters ironed out of its hull every year on a regular basis. Robau never reports these skirmishes to the authorities, however, and the _w'l'qn_ engineers don't care, provided the _King_ isn't getting shot at in their Free Space.

Spock has been wearing Robau down for a total of eighteen weeks, now, and the captain resignedly makes time to meet him in person. They meet at a restaurant in Sdvaar. It is Spock's first experience in the shuttle hub, and while he finds the controlled atmosphere chilly, this isn't nearly as uncomfortable as the overwhelming blare of lights, psi energy and physical contact on the overcrowded streets of perpetual night. Despite all his mental controls and breathing exercises, he is visibly ruffled as he sits down opposite Robau, their table far back in the corner of the nearly deserted restaurant.

Robau's skin is the colour of dark chocolate, but warmed by a subtly red flush the likes of which Spock has never seen. In person, his face is even freer about expressing his grim mood. He doesn't look pleased to see Spock.

"You're insane," is the first thing Robau says. Spock blinks, taken aback. The human goes on ruthlessly, "You're the closest thing this god-forsaken planet has to royalty, and you want to go off on some cramped, tiny ship with a bunch of people-- _humans_, moreover-- that you don't even know so that you can learn what it's like to get shot at and risk your life breaking every law of every major political power in the known universe?"

"You do," Spock points out, politely using Standard in case Robau's universal translator isn't recently updated.

Robau is not amused. "What are you playing at, boy?"

"I am not a child," protests Spock. "I have passed the Vulcan age of majority and am considered a mature adult with full legal responsibilities."

"And what age is that?"

"The age of _kahs-wan_: ten."

Robau gets up to leave, throwing aside the napkin in his lap.

Spock is not proud to admit that he panics. "I can be a valuable asset to you," he insists, moving to block Robau from walking away from the table. The human's nostrils flare, his eyes going narrow with anger, but Spock holds his ground. "I speak Standard, Cardassian, Andorian--"

"That's what a translator's for," Robau snaps, shoving him aside and striding past. Spock reels at the flood of emotion unwittingly transmitted in the brief contact. He grabs Robau's belt, intending only to halt the man for long enough to make his case, but finds himself suddenly staring down the barrel of a laser pistol.

His heart leaps, his capillaries expand to oxygenate more blood faster, his liver releases a surge of glucose, but suddenly he finds that everything has gone very still. He sees, he hears so clearly, drenched in the lucidity of epinephrine like a shock of cold water over his whole body. Spock tastes adrenaline sharp on his tongue and finds himself fearless and he_ likes it_.

Robau's hard eyes seem to find something unusual in Spock's face, because he blinks, cracking his fury. He stares at Spock for a long time. Experimentally, he pokes the pistol's barrel against Spock's forehead. Spock doesn't flinch. Instead, while he's not even paying attention to his mouth it smiles without permission, his lips curling in a mimicry of human amusement at the drift of surprise over Robau's face.

"Okay," the captain says after a moment, "let's try this again. You've got five minutes to impress me."

*

Stealing the _Number One_'s starter chip from Kirk's wallet wasn't the riskiest plan Spock ever had. It was, in its own way, quite logical, if somewhat dependent on human psychology. However, having built a thorough psychological profile of Captain Christopher Pike (much of that profile based on Robau's first hand accounts, too), he foresaw only a 16.2% risk that Pike would favour irrational, unpredictable, violent Jim Kirk over Spock, particularly if Spock had experience under Robau and the _Number One_ as a bargaining chip. It was true that Kirk had talent, though. Perhaps in several years he would make a decent officer.

If he ever learned to stop allowing his hormones to influence him, that was. Seducing him was ludicrously easy. The moment Spock lowered his voice to the intimate murmur he had been taught, Kirk began to broadcast arousal, growing steadily more desperate as Spock continued on. Inwardly, Spock was repulsed that talk of dying animals could arouse the human, but he had learned long ago that it was necessary to separate his personal tastes from his work. Kirk's emotional problems and slaughter-hide jacket would soon be out of his life for good.

"All its strength is consumed, all its energy used up, leaving it quivering, exhausted, and quite... spent." Spock wondered momentarily if he had been too blatant, but Kirk fairly vibrated at the word. Air dragged heavy in the human's throat, sighing faintly between his parted lips.

Kirk's body was a fragile, malleable thing, pliant in Spock's hands. Even with Spock's distaste for the man, his cool flesh was unexpectedly arousing. Kirk was responsive, unconsciously desirable in his utter abandon as he pushed back against Spock. The arousal that had been surrounding Spock like a fog clarified instantly, blaring straight into his core.

"Slowly, inexorably, the mud drags it down, pressing in heavier. Hotter."

Kirk mouthed the last word unconsciously, his lips forming the silent syllables. He was sweating again, shirt clinging to the fresh dampness on his collarbones. His breath catching unevenly, Spock slammed a hand down over Kirk's, pinning it against the bar, and twined their fingers together. Kirk arched his back in response, his spine forming a hard curve that Spock bent his body tight around, bearing down hard.

Struggling for air as if he were the very creature Spock described, Kirk had his eyes shut and his pink mouth opened helplessly, wanton and wanting. For a reputedly dangerous man, Kirk was surprisingly submissive as Spock rode him. The muscles surging and receding molasses-slow beneath his thin slick skin no match for the strength with which Spock could bear down if he chose to, and they both knew it.

Spock didn't quite go as lewd as licking Kirk's tiny rounded ear, but it was a struggle. Basking in the warm flare of human arousal and the knowledge that he had ignited it, he contented himself with exhaling hot, wet breath that made the rough, alien golden hair stand on end. "Thick and sticky and sweltering... searing..."

Spock had stolen Kirk's wallet almost thirty seconds ago. After that, he had no excuse but that he was truly just indulging himself in the human's gloriously willing body.

*

Spock impresses Robau. Five minutes is far longer than he needs; by the end of it he is simply reciting his grade point averages in all of his subjects for the last seven years of schooling. He breaks off in the middle, and when Robau looks at him in askance, Spock replies, "The time is over."

"And how exactly do you propose we get you onboard my ship? I'm not kidnapping you. I don't need that kind of heat, not from Vulcan."

Spock had this figured out a long time ago. "My school is part of a program that enables students to spend a year of their education working aboard an active starship in lieu of regular studies. You can submit the _Luther King_ and I will apply for the position. As captain, you have final say on which student is taken aboard."

Tiredly, Robau points out, "They're not going to accept me into the program when I tell them we leave Free Space on a regular basis, let alone that we usually get shot at while we're at it."

"So lie," Spock says, like it's the most obvious thing ever. He is genuinely surprised the human didn't think of that first.

Robau stares at him for an inordinately long time, rubs his forehead, takes a drink of his alcohol and finally looks back at Spock.

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever been involved in since George Kirk said to me, 'Let's get the fuck out of Starfleet'," Robau tells him.

Spock raises an eyebrow at the man's error of memory in his own story, which has been told and retold throughout the galaxy. "I thought Winona Kirk said that."

And Robau lets out a hard, barking laugh. "True. George was the one that said, 'We should steal this ship while we're at it'."

*

Everything went wrong the moment Spock felt Kirk's psi waves explode over the haze of the other club-goers' lust and excitement, roiling like a jagged black cloud full of lethal electricity. It made Spock's skin shudder. The finely honed psi points on his face seared.

The sight of Kirk's furious face in the crowd behind him was almost a relief, in that Spock at least knew where Kirk was. His calculated probability of getting shot by the pistol in Kirk's boot dropped from 87.5% to 39.1%. If Kirk hadn't opened fire yet, he probably wasn't going to. At least the human's rashness knew limits, even if those limits were far beyond anything Spock would call reasonable.

The music changed, bass line dropping low into a pounding rhythm that Spock knew well. He made it his business to keep up on popular trends, if only to blend when he was in situations like the current one. He shifted automatically at the pickup notes, the swivel of his hips so swift that he was in time to leap left along with the suddenly synergetic crowd. Twist right, shift weight backwards and then sweep the right leg forward to balance out the reverse momentum-- they moved in perfect sync, hundreds of strangers united in the thrall of music.

It was a fascinating phenomenon, the way popular music could engage other beings to the point of mob mentality. Spock was still far more interested in the fact that the synchronised dance made it possible for him to predict openings in the crowd and sweep through, lengthening his leaps and cutting his turns in time to slide through gaps in the seething crowd.

Behind him, a voice roared something feral in Klingon. Spock hissed in frustration. He already knew he hadn't put enough distance between himself and Kirk, knew he needed a new plan, but he couldn't _think_! Between the pounding music, the suffocating psi waves and the tsunami of bodies pressing in on him, his mental shields were fraying dangerously low. As a touch telepath, Spock was at a far greater disadvantage than Kirk.

_Get in-- get done-- get gone_. The first rule of working in crowded spaces. He was well aware that he had already broken it.

A body bumped up against his from behind, big hands coming down on his hips. Spock let out a snarl in his secondary vocal cords, the barbaric sound being more efficient than a vocal warning. The hands didn't let go, however, and the thin layer of his jacket wasn't enough to shield him from the lust and want pressing in on his mind. Feeling himself rapidly losing control of the entire situation, Spock reached for the weapon he knew was necessary: ruthlessness. He reached for one of the hands, prepared to bend back a couple of fingers--

\--and stopped, struck dumb by the bright green pigmentation. Craning his head back, Spock looked up at the tall alien clutching him from behind. It was a long way to look, for the Orion was more than thirty centimetres taller than him. An Orion? Inside the Free Space blockade? And then there was another, dancing very nearby.

If they were within the blockade, there was no way they could be slavers. If there was one thing _w'l'qn_'s isolationist policy was good for, it was keeping the Union out. They had to be the only Orions Spock had ever heard of gaining refugee status on _w'l'qn_. He wanted to ask how they had done it, where they had come from, if they knew of more that needed help through the border, but those thoughts were superfluous. At the moment all that mattered was the fact that both were far larger than Kirk-- large enough to scare off even the most reckless of humans, or fight him off if he was too stupid to be scared. Odds like three against one evened out Kirk's advantage of a gun.

Spock shoved back the uncontrolled psi waves sucking at him and danced.

*

He learns to dance aboard the _Luther King_. It is part of his training, a small section of learning to pass for Romulan. There are no Vulcans outside of Free Space, and looking like one could be fatal. Along with the engineering and navigation lessons, Spock is taught seduction. The crudity of the lessons makes him thoroughly uncomfortable, but he must admit that there is a ruthless practicality to it.

Bait is always valuable, particularly bait that can fight back as well as he can.

The navigator Kaide teaches him, her methods unlike anything any of his _w'l'qn_ instructors ever employed. She uses her body, confident and utterly unselfconscious. He _envies _that before he can even articulate what he envies: the freedom, the poise, the strength of knowing that every movement gives her power over him. Because he's fifteen and he wants her, he does, and she knows it, and that is power.

It's a loss of control he shouldn't permit himself-- but why shouldn't he? Kaide's body is the only good thing on the ship, and it isn't a crime for _w'l'qni_ to take pleasure in another. As Spock gets better, the songs get faster, the steps trickier than shuffling his feet on the spot, but he excels at precise choreography. The hour of dance turns into two and then however many they can fit between shifts and sleeping. Spock expects at any moment for Kaide to tire of him, but she doesn't seem to. Greatly daring, he lets his lips touch the back of her neck one day, between the shower-damp locks of her hair, and she sighs and her psi waves go pleasurably smooth.

They dance fast and hard, dirty, furious, slow, shy, seductive, playful, flirty, angry, aggressive, and everything else in between. Spock learns ten ways to seduce a being with his body and no words. He learns the correlation between the exact sine curve of his spine and the reaction it will provoke in a male, the precise degree to which he lowers his eyelids and what that can do to a female.

He learns what it is to be _powerful_, on the day that Kaide suddenly breaks away from him with a shuddering gasp, red-faced, and he smells her arousal. He learns what it is to be hunted, when the next day she pushes him back onto his bunk and slithers sinuously up and down in his lap until he is biting his lip and struggling not to die of humiliation at the erection she has drawn out of him, but he is fifteen and she understands that and laughs not unkindly to tell him the reaction is okay, he is okay. Most of all, most importantly of all, he learns that: he is okay.

_He _is okay.

Four months into the tour, Robau sends him into a bar on an outpost far from civilisation, where the patrons all carry phasers and drink Romulan ale. The captain looks faintly reluctant to give the order, but, he says, "I have to know if you can do it."

Spock returns white-faced, shaking faintly, with bite marks on his neck and his target slung over his shoulder unconscious. Robau tortures the man for information on the last run of slaves that went bad, a ship full of people betrayed for some spacer's passage into Union territory. The man's screams echoing through the _King_'s too-thin bulkheads, Spock lays curled up on his bunk in the dark with his head on Kaide's lap while she strokes his hair, her fingers playing gently over his temple and ear.

He learns to get over it.

*

Of all the languages Spock knew, he never had the opportunity to learn Orion. He was utterly lost as Kirk purred to the Orions, and shocked by the human's recklessness. Then the Orions laughed and shoved Spock right into Kirk's arms.

Mouth too close to Spock's ear, Kirk spat, "Don't speak Orion? Translation: Shut up and dance with me or these two'll have you on a slave ship to Terra before tomorrow morning."

No, no-- impossible. Slavers past the blockade? It-- he--

He couldn't _think_!

"You son of a bitch," Kirk said harshly.

Spock lashed out immediately, drunk as much on the psi waves of fury that simmered around Kirk as on the ill-advised drink that was starting to catch up with him. His first impulse was shameful, but it was what it was: he slammed his heel down on Kirk's foot with all his considerable strength. The human's face contorted with pain.

Spock couldn't believe what Kirk did next, even as the human's teeth closed around his earlobe and sank in tight, his response purely animal. Spock barely managed to muffle his sharp cry of pain, the white-hot agony like a knife through his skull. No _w'l'qn_ would ever do such a thing in petty revenge any more than a human male would kick between another male's legs.

Infuriated, Spock refused to cooperate. Ten seconds ago, he might have admitted his defeat, surrendered Kirk's wallet, and moved on to the back up plan, which was to employ Kirk's lack of self control against him, seduce him back into a better mood and attempt to talk him into setting up a meeting with Pike so that Spock could discuss an appointment aboard the _Number One_. The chances of success were far lower on that plan-- 39.3%-- but it was all Spock had left. Now, though, with his Kirk's saliva wet on his savaged ear--

"_Get _it back," Spock snarled, surrendering to emotion. The human had no idea how easily Spock could crush his ribs from their current position. If he wanted to fight, they would--

Kirk went for his knife. Wrenching on Kirk's jeans, Spock dragged the human tight against him, trapping his arm. Psi waves of ugly lust seethed from Kirk, leeching into Spock's skin like greasy snakes. He felt dirtied. And the Orions-- the slavers were still watching, and Kirk's hand was nearly on his knife, and the music kept pounding and the crowd kept ramming their energies against him, relentless, smothering, ripping away at his shields oh _fuck _he was in trouble--

Paradoxically, Kirk smiled. The crawl of his sweat-slippery fingers against Spock's lower back was the most horrifying thing Spock had ever felt.

_Not this. Not this, anything but this. Not this, how can this be happening _here _oh _no _not this again not this no no nonono_\--

Panicking, sick with the knowledge that he was panicking and he couldn't do anything to control himself, Spock twisted and writhed in Kirk's grip, trying to escape the fingers forcing their way into his pants. He felt all the blood leaving his face. Numb terror was rising up in his chest. The persona abandoned him entirely, his _w'l'qn_ speech patterns reasserting themselves in panic when he demanded, "I insist you halt immediately!"

The human's fingers kissed him lecherously. As hard as Spock fought it, one of Kirk's fingertips pushed inside of him, burning as it invaded him dry. Kirk's beautiful features were ugly with pain and ruthlessness as he sneered into Spock's face, ignoring his desperation and struggle equally. His untrimmed nails cut white lines of pain through the nausea.

_Not again_.

Anything, anything to make it _stop_\-- but not at the cost of what Spock had worked to hard for, all those long years. Not at the cost of surrender.

Spock thrust the wallet back with a snarl of, "_Monster_," in Vulcanir. Then, a moment later, he seized Kirk's wrist and started to break it, a slow vicious crush like the ancient primal _w'l'qn_ rage roiling up from below the wreckage of all his shattered shields and mental controls. He could feel Kirk's agony transmitted skin to skin and took visceral cruel satisfaction in it, in the irony of torturing with the same hand he had kissed Kirk with.

_Not_ ever _again_.

He lost himself. The emotion was consuming, and it was pure weakness. Fifteen seconds later, Spock realised that too late when he found himself doubled over around Kirk's fist, trying not to vomit all over the floor from the white-hot pain crippling him.

Dimly, Spock felt Kirk's hand grope in his jacket, and then the human tore away and Spock collapsed to his knees, dry heaving convulsively. His breath burned in his throat, tears welling hot behind his second eyelids as he blinked desperately, trying to clear his vision of the black streaks threatening it. Above him, somebody caught their foot against his side and tripped, nearly falling over. People shouted in alarm, seething with concern and fright.

Over the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears, Spock felt a peak in the psi waves of the Orions, the species' mental texture like dry lizard scales against his mind.

Crushing back the pain in an iron fist, he heaved himself to his feet and ran.

*

The _King_'s first two runs outside the blockade go smoothly. Spock learns fast, so fast that within six months he can perform any job on the ship save for Robau's and the chief engineer's. They treat him less like a guest and more like one of their own, remembering to bring him bitter coffee on alpha shift and including him in poker nights.

He gets faster, stronger, more confident. Long shifts in engineering make the blisters on his hands heal and harden. He develops a taste for dancing, for spicy food, for the ship's tiny library of archaic Terran music-- for everything that should be anathema to a _w'l'qn_ and therefore makes Spock's blood race. Kaide buys him a leather jacket after their first successful trip outside of Free Space, and it may be slaughtered animal hide but it is warm and he desperately needs it on cold deep space stations. By the time half a year has passed, Spock has grown comfortable in it, the leather worn to familiar creases.

The third run nearly kills them all.

The freighter is drifting in pirate space, engines dead and lights off. None of the _Luther King_'s sensors pick up any life signs, but a large organic mass in the cargo hold makes Robau's mouth pull tight as he considers. It could be dead bodies or valuable goods.

They can't afford to be picky about what they salvage. Robau orders the _King_'s tractor beam engaged, and he dispatches an away team via transporter.

Finding the ship's atmosphere stable and safe when they beam aboard, the away team strips off their pressure suits and fans out through the ship. Spock is directed to the bridge to search for the ship's logs or any source of mechanical malfunction while the rest of the group heads for the cargo bay. Alone, he navigates the blacked-out corridors by flashlight and memory of what a _Reliant_-class Union ship's layout should be. The beam of light bobbing reveals bare bulkheads lettered with alien symbols that he can't read. This is a Syndicate ship, then.

With all climate controls deactivated, Spock is shivering hard with cold by the time he reaches the bridge. It is deserted, empty of corpses or any signs of struggle at all. Spock seats himself in the captain's chair and tests the controls. Nothing functions, not even the manual activation of the intercom system, which should be powered by a battery separately from the warp core. Frowning slightly, he draws his knife and pries open the panel set in the chair's arm, shining his light down on the wiring and circuitry within.

The blaze of a transporter beam blinds him with blue light. Only by purest instinct does Spock dive for the floor. The chair disintegrates under a barrage of disruptor fire.

Spock rolls to the side, dodging another spray of lethal blasts, and throws his flashlight across the bridge to hide his location in the dark. His mind is adrenaline-pure, racing, calculating angles and distances and rates of speed. In the pitch black, he hears a voice only 2.1 metres from him utter frustrated words in Orion-- and he lunges.

His tackle catches the woman across the knees, throwing her to the deck. On the way down, there is a loud ugly smack as her head strikes something, possibly the corner of a console. Spock finds the disruptor rifle and wrenches it away from her, throwing it to the side. One flailing hand claws at his face, catching his cheek painfully, but he ignores it. The Orion is now screaming in her language, bucking and twisting beneath him, her frantic struggles becoming a serious threat. If she has a secondary weapon-- a pistol, a dagger--

Spock doesn't think about where he thrusts his knife, just stabs down with all of his strength. A shriek splits the darkness. Blood gushes over his hands instantly, warming them. Because she's still kicking, he does the only thing he can, and stabs her again. His knife grates on bone, snaps through-- and his animalistic panting is the only sound on the suddenly silent bridge.

The blood has gone cold so fast that his hands are freezing again already. He is now shivering violently, his teeth chattering as the frigid chill of space seeps through the ship's dead hull. Spock knows that this was a trap, that he has to get back to the rest of the group. They could be fighting, dying, ambushed by similar tactics; the _Luther King_ could be under fire right now with only Robau and the chief engineer aboard to man the bridge. He has to help or they may all die, and he'll be no use if he's shivering too badly to aim a phaser straight.

He strips the bloody jacket from the Orion's corpse and puts it on over his own. This is logic.

Thirty-two frantic, exhausting minutes later, minutes which Spock will never erase from his memory even though he will never be able to remember them clearly, the _Luther King_ jumps to warp. Everybody is aboard once more, all alive, most of them injured. Spock spends the better part of the next hour in engineering, coaxing warp 7.6 out of the straining battered engines, without ever realising that he is wearing a Syndicate officer's uniform jacket and covered from head to toe in dark purple blood.

He keeps the jacket. It's warm. This is logic.

Five days later, both of his jackets go missing from the laundry. After shift, Spock returns to his cabin to find old jacket, the one Kaide gave him, laid out on his desk-ledge with the Orion officer's rank insignia stitched onto the shoulders of it. Robau is sitting on his bunk, waiting, and watches in silence as Spock picks up his jacket and examines the new decorations.

"You regret that?" Robau asks, nodding at the insignia.

Spock has already considered the question at length, but he thinks about it again. What he did aboard the Union ship, that feral act in the dark... what does it mean for him? What has it made him into?

"No," he says simply. It is the truth. Logic does not always agree with emotion, but when Spock asks himself if he grieves to have taken the life of a being who contributed to the enslavement and slaughter of countless other beings, logic and emotion answer the same: no. He has seen the harshness and suffering that the Union has caused, scarred onto the bodies and minds of broken sex slaves that can barely step off the _King_'s loading ramp for fear of unshackled freedom, and he knows that killing fast is a mercy compared to what the Union grants others. This makes him a criminal. It makes him amoral. It doesn't make him a bad person. "No. I do not."

Robau nods. "Good. You shouldn't."

Spock rubs his thumb over the insignia. "Then what is this for?"

"To remind you. Don't ever grieve for the scum you have to kill in order to save lives. They aren't worth it. But don't ever forget what it was like the first time you felt somebody go limp and dead under your hands, either. Don't ever forget what killing really is."

This is good logic.

*

And just as Spock had held Kirk tight in his arms, supporting the human as he trembled and wheezed and fought his way back to life with his fragile body driven nearly to the point of collapse, Kirk opened his hand and let the knife clatter to the floor, blade stained with green blood.

They knew the logic of the black deep, the two of them, the ruthlessness it took to choose between fighting and fleeing, murder and mercy. They each remembered the merciless animal things they had done in the name of survival, and because they knew the necessity that drove these brutalities, they could forgive someone else for being driven to commit one against them-- forgive, yes, if not forget. Never forget that they had chosen a dangerous ally. They knew that sometimes pressing need had to take precedence over hate.

"You said you've got contacts. Can you get us a ship?" Kirk had logic after all, if not logic as _w'l'qn_ normally knew it.

It wasn't the deal Spock had been expecting, but that wasn't to say he hadn't planned for it. The idea had been sitting in the back of his mind, present but classified as an ill-advised venture with an abominably low chance of success. Adjusting the calculations for the assistance of Kirk and his crew...

A 28.2% chance of success? Was it worth his whole future, his entire life and the safety of those whose secrets he was keeping? Were Spock to decide with his own personal welfare in mind, the answer would be a definitive 'no'. But when he recalled that the question he was really asking was, 'Are the lives of enslaved beings worth taking a risk with a 71.8% chance of failure?' the answer had to be 'yes'. The answer had to be yes even if the figure was 99.9%. He had already committed to a life of taking that risk a very long time ago, and even while every one of his people was ignorant and uncaring of the necessity of Spock's work, he would remain committed.

Somebody had to be.

"Yes," Spock said.

For once, Kirk didn't smile-- or rather, he did, but the expression was every bit as tight and tired as the psi waves he was broadcasting. Spock knew before Kirk even reached out that the human was going to take his hand again, touch him with the fingers that had invaded him-- and in the eternity of a heartbeat he made the choice to permit it.

Kirk's hand was surprisingly gentle, his dilithium-blue eyes full of shadows. All of him had softened with the exhaustion that he was trying to hide. Still, there was enough sharpness left in the man for him to be dangerous, for the caress of Spock's knuckles with the pad of his thumb was intentional and exactly as provocative as Kirk had meant it to be. Spock shivered before he could help himself at the flare of lust that jumped from Kirk's skin to his, knowing well that the human hadn't missed it.

Spock didn't need Kirk's invitation to know that they were going to be at each other's throats, one way or another, for a very long time to come.

*

By the time Spock is twenty-one, he will be considered a terrorist on Vulcan, a pirate in the Union and a hero in Free Space.

But this is now. That will come later.


End file.
